's sagacity.--Plots against
Fabius.--He goes to Rome.--Minucius risks a battle.--Speech of
Fabius.--Fabius returns to the army.--He is deprived of the supreme
power.--Division of power.--Ambuscade of Hannibal.--Hannibal's
success.--Fabius comes to the rescue.--Speech of Minucius.--The Roman
army again united.--Character of Fabius.--His integrity.

In the mean time, while Hannibal was thus rapidly making his way
toward the gates of Rome, the people of the city became more and more
alarmed, until at last a general feeling of terror pervaded all the
ranks of society. Citizens and soldiers were struck with one common
dread. They had raised a new army and put it under the command of a
new consul, for the terms of service of the others had expired.
Flaminius was the name of this new commander, and he was moving
northward at the head of his forces at the time that Hannibal was
conducting his troops with so much labor and difficulty through the
meadows and morasses of the Arno.

This army was, however, no more successful than its predecessors had
been. Hannibal contrived to entrap Flaminius by a stratagem, as he had
entrapped Sempronius before. There is in the eastern part of Etruria,
near the mountains, a lake called Lake Thrasymene. It happened that
this lake extended so near to the base of the mountains as to leave
only a narrow passage between--a passage but little wider than was
necessary for a road. Hannibal contrived to station a detachment of
his troops in ambuscade at the foot of the mountains, and others on
the declivities above, and then in some way or other to entice
Flaminius and his army through the defile. Flaminius was, like
Sempronius, ardent, self-confident, and vain. He despised the power of
Hannibal, and thought that his success hitherto had been owing to the
inefficiency or indecision of his predecessors. For his part, his only
anxiety was to encounter him, for he was sure of an easy victory. He
advanced, therefore, boldly and without concern into the pass of
Thrasymene, when he learned that Hannibal was encamped beyond it.

Hannibal had established an encampment openly on some elevated ground
beyond the pass, and as Flaminius and his troops came into the
narrowest part of the defile, they saw this encampment at a distance
before them, with a broad plain beyond the pass intervening. They
supposed that the whole force of the enemy was there, not dreaming of
the presence of the strong detachments which w